How illustrations are born

I always start with a sketch – ALWAYS!

Even if its a few lines on the back of a napkin

It is very much a planning stage – It allows me to think beyond the scope of the tools in front of me – if I need to source an image, If I need to find an object, if I need to build something in a 3d application. I can have it all planned in advance just because I have it sketched somewhere.

If I know that I will have to commit time and resources to a illustrative project then I need everyone to be “on the same page”. The only way to do that is to produce a drawing that we can all look at and approve to get to the next stage. I’ve found through trial and error that (for me anyway) the best way to do this is to do it on tracing paper – this means I get “physical photoshop layers” that I can shift around.

We often go to meetings and rearrange stuff and draw stuff in on the boardroom table. Once everyone is happy we can move on.

And this explains why I have so many bits of paper everywhere!

**Update**

Eating my own dog-food

Hello, my name is Ricardo Pirroni and I own and run MyConcept Limited.
- And yes this is a very strange title for my first post, but everything will become clear.

I used to have a very ordinary static website with some nice pictures on, which could only be changed by yours truly. Obviously this meant that because I was so busy doing other things I never, ever changed it.

Now this is the kind of thing that I go on and on to clients that they just shouldn’t do.

“Have a blog“, I say. “Write a post a day“, I say. “Your site should be alive“, I say.

Of course, as is usually the case, I am guilty of not practicing what I preach.

There is a phrase that is used in software development circles, it is, “eating one’s own dog food” sometimes shortened down to “dogfooding“. It is when a company uses the products that it makes. It demonstrates confidence in its own products, and hence a kind of testimonial advertising.

So if I am not posting to my blog and keeping my site alive then how I can expect anybody else to do the same…?

Therefore, here it is. The new MyConcept site
– Yes it is a little bare right now and there are lots of things I need to fix up. But if I don’t do it, it wont get done!

It will slowly fill up show the range of work that gets done. Eventually there will be lots to see and lots to read.
And if I don’t do it, if I don’t update, If I don’t make it live. Then you have my permission to send me pictures of dogs to remind me or tins of dog food.
Just remember that by the time I receive them I may have already eaten!

Ricardo Pirroni